


Two Wishes

by cimorene



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Dreams, Fangirl Japanese, First Time, M/M, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cimorene/pseuds/cimorene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karl and Viggo are in Japan for the premiere of The Two Towers, getting their tourist on, and Karl keeps dreaming about Viggo. Dreaming that he is Viggo, to be precise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Wishes

**Author's Note:**

> First published 2003. Beta by Elaine.
> 
> Warning: weirdness, white men having epiphanies due to looking at Japanese culture from the outside without any Japanese characters, embarrassing early writing.

It is not until the third dream that Karl realizes he is dreaming about being Viggo.

It's one of those gray mornings where everything seems slower than it usually is, even though it really isn't; and when he opens his eyes all the way and stares up at the low white ceiling without any little snatches of dream in between, the air is supernaturally clear. It's a loud, outrageous kind of clearness that he will carry around with him until he's consumed his second cup of green tea. It would take three cups of coffee, but he knows it will be green tea, because when he minces down the hallway in the ridiculous too-small Japanese slippers, Viggo will be there with a cup of tea already waiting for him.

Sure, he has to get up. He knows this positively, but of course, because they are in Japan, he and Viggo both took hot baths--he uses the term loosely--in a swimming pool brought nearly to the boiling point the night before, after quick scrubbings under detachable shower nozzles that he can't really term "showers." The shallow little shower cubbies lining the walls had made the bathing room sort of like a giant bathroom the first night, and the showers could have been urinals. Not to mention that the little walls'd made it nearly impossible to get any sort of a look at Viggo. But that was the night before last, and he's gotten a few decent peeks by now.

"Decent" is a relative term, of course. He's not ready to stop looking, but he didn't exactly get to give him the once-over. He'd called Ashley sitting in the platform bed that was the Japanese idea of what a Westerner ought to sleep in. "Nothing to write home about," he'd said regretfully (of the glimpse, not of Viggo--o-hooo boy, not about Viggo).

"Right," she'd snorted, "Urban, you're more full of shit than that diaper you were too chicken to change when Aaron was six months old and I went to the double feature with Missy. You _called_ me, didn't you?"

Well, right. "Girl talk," he'd protested weakly, and she'd laughed at him.

"Take another gander for me tonight."

"Cheeky witch."

On the whole, last night's gander(s) at Viggo don't quite make up for the lack of morning shower, at least, not this early--maybe when the sun's a little higher. But he swings his legs out of bed anyway, eager to see what Viggo will say over breakfast and where he will want to go and what his shirt will look like. He finds himself smiling even though he's feeling a little surreal, because the dream was _nice_.

Viggo's voice is always scratchy in the mornings. Karl remembers this from shooting, when Viggo-as-Aragorn would show up in that damned green leather costume as slept-in and probably close to as smelly as it would have been on Aragorn himself. Viggo drank coffee on the shoots, which shows that it is not an anti-coffee doctrine on Viggo's part so much as a need to get the Japanese experience. Karl can sympathize with the idea, if not entirely understand it. You can tell by looking, or at least, Karl can, that Viggo has never done anything without squeezing every last drop of experience out of it. He'll probably write poetry to the green tea--and it will be _good_ poetry.

"ETA to first interview, three days," Viggo announces by way of greeting, with a scratchy good-morning sort of Viggo smile.

"Minus time it takes idiotic non-caffeinated Kiwi to consume one breakfast," says Karl wryly. Viggo offers him the little basket of hot washcloths. It's not as if he hasn't just washed his hands, but he likes to play with them. Viggo predictably uses his to do the most provocative thing possible, i.e., carefully wipe his mouth. Karl stares. "Ah, did you sleep well?" Viggo probably sleeps naked.

"The futon is really different from a Westernized one," says Viggo seriously. "It's harder, on the floor, so it took some getting used to, but it's really quite comfortable. And I've heard it's good for your back." This from someone who regularly sleeps outside on the ground. Karl is more a someone else's couch kind of guy, if he's going to have a sleeping adventure, although he considered asking Viggo to take him camping an infinity of times during shooting. "And you?" says Viggo, who would probably just _tell_ whether he sleeps naked without batting an eyelash if he were asked, just the way he'd pack you up on his camping trips like a cross between so much luggage and a tourist. Karl still doesn't quite know why he never asked.

"I had a nice dream," says Karl absently.

Viggo leans back in his chair like a dream critic readying his mental checklist. He's still holding the cup of green tea with both hands in front of him, and his long fingers wrap around it, smothering the cup. There's no handle to break the gentle lines. "Anything interesting?"

Karl laughs. "There was this kid--not exactly a kid. There was a man, and we were at a party. He was telling jokes I didn't get, only they were still--"

It hardly registers until now that he has been saying _he_ about the dark man. Karl clearly remembers a dream-introduction and he remembers thinking, "Mmm, nice; who is he?," looking the guy over, and pulsing all over with arousal. And then he remembers a hot restless blur of dream--not sex--dream masturbation, he guesses: standing alone in a corner leaning against a wall, watching the man with his blur of dark hair move around the room while need and pleasure scorched him in waves.

Only the guy was _him._ The dark guy. Not him in the dream, because clearly it was someone else; but he can see the face in his mind now, and it is the face he saw in the mirror this morning.

Viggo raises an eyebrow, not impatiently, and smiles over the rim of the teacup.

"--The guy was _me,_" says Karl blankly.

Viggo smiles over the rim of his teacup, "You _met_ yourself? One of those call-in radio shows could have a lot of fun with that."

"No-ooooo," says Karl. He wasn't having sex with himself: he's not his own type at all. In the dream, he was quiet and existing on a low level of constant nervousness. He looks strangely at Viggo. "I think I was--" _You._

"Yes?"

Recap: He dreamed that he was Viggo, having a crush on, and then a nice wank to the image of, himself? Never mind why he was so certain it was Viggo in the dream. Maybe he needed to think about this a little. Too bad he had never learned Maori or something Viggo didn't speak so he could call Ashley right away, making a record two times in a week he didn't ask for Aaron straight off. Nothing like this'd ever happened in college, when she was always within easy reach. Trust the universe to take him off-guard like this.

"Nothing," Karl mumbles.

*

That wasn't the first dream. Now he thinks of it, right after he arrived at the hotel (traditional style--Viggo's choice), fresh from a long bus ride from the airport, Karl collapsed into an armchair in the lobby. He stared mesmerized at the narrow plexiglass fish tank that almost made its own wall in the center of the room for some time, and he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew he was waking up convinced he was on an airplane, trying to set aside one of those clear plastic glasses of wine. He even glanced down disorientedly at the arm of his chair in search of the flight attendant call button. A quick glance around showed him the lobby of a Japanese hotel, and he stood up almost faster than his partly-awake brain could handle.

Thinking about it now, Karl finds it odd, because he prefers red wine to white by a factor of ten at least, but the wine in his hand was definitely white.

He knows that Viggo likes white wine.

And he can't remember the dream he had before the flight, although he remembers refusing to tell Ashley about it when she shook him awake and booted him off of her couch to make coffee. She drove him to the Auckland airport and made fun of his crush later in the morning. Karl said, less good-humored than usual out of a certain understandable anxiety, "It's just a thing!"

She nodded, "Of course, and Aaron is just an experiment. Who can blame either of us? Because Viggo is so sexy and babies are so cute."

Karl laughed against his will, and he snorts a little now, remembering all too well when she'd tried to talk him into the baby in the first place. "You know you want one," she coaxed, "don't you? Aren't they just so cute? But see this way, you won't have to do as much work. Heaven knows I don't even _want_ you around as much as you are." Which had probably been what convinced him.

"What is it?" Says Viggo, who is holding his camera between both hands like he means to do something very important with it, even though they're walking down a perfectly ordinary street that they could have found anywhere.

He resists the temptation to say it's just a thing, and shakes his head. Explanation would be hopeless. He'd probably end up on his knees--or is that on one knee? Just a thing, indeed. Karl bats the thought irritably away. "Just something Ashley said."

"Ashley is Aaron's mother," says Viggo, who has turned his head to look now and is studying him curiously.

Karl nods. "We've been best friends a long time. You'd like her." Alas that they could never meet, because Ashley, without actually saying anything to Viggo, would certainly find some way to make the whole thing as painful and obnoxious as possible.

In high school she had been fond of telling his girlfriends that he really didn't like bras, or long hair, or that he had an insatiable desire to see them in fishnets, just to see what they would do. ("If she would do that for you it would never work anyway," seventeen-year-old Ashley had told him, "she'd be a doormat--you'd walk all over her.")

And he prefers not to think the name of Brad, the blind date who keyed his Jeep when it was new.

Ashley: "He would have done it sooner or later. Better before you got involved."

"How about before we got involved but _after_ we got to fuck?" Karl snapped.

"Darling, are you frustrated? I can set you up with someone." --Something he'd actually considered at the time, and he hadn't been half as frustrated then. He thinks setting him up with Viggo, though, is beyond even her powers.

Viggo is looking at him. Still. Karl has a hard time being completely casual under the scrutiny, his spine tingling with that pleasant burr of sexual excitement even though he's smiling and walking at Viggo's shoulder normally. But he looks away first and points across the street at a blackened wood building where a red door is flanked by paper lanterns. The overhanging balcony is all blond pine. The upstairs windows are paper. It is nestled between a Fuji camera shop and something called Suntory that could be a drugstore or an ice cream joint.

He touches Viggo's arm and points. Viggo says, "What?" and then a charming little "Oh," following the line of Karl's arm. "Take a picture." He leaves the camera in Karl's hand and darts across the little street--everything here is miniature, the cars, the streets, the windows, the telephone poles, so he feels like he's on the set of a children's TV show with Viggo.

The camera strap smells like Viggo's skin.

He's lining up the shot, picking up the occasional word of Japanese as the rest floats over him: I, you, then, good, bathe, telephone, actually. Photo, walk. Love. His finger slips on the trigger button, and Karl winces. He has to advance the camera manually and raise it to his eyes again, deliberately closing his ears. Viggo's standing with his hands in his pockets, making the funniest face, and it makes Karl smile too. As for "love," he just must have misheard.

What are the odds?

Thinking about it later, he's sure the jerking-off dream (as he has come to call it) was really the third time he dreamed he was Viggo. He has a conviction that may or may not be based in memory; there's nothing concrete to ground it to. He doesn't know if it happened the night on Ashley's sofa, during a nap on the plane, or two weeks ago. But he decides to call this one the third anyway.

Now if only he knew what to do with it.

*

He walks into a narrow alley thinking about Viggo's hands, a Japanese thrift shop thinking about Viggo's mouth. He pauses in a temple gateway, looking over his shoulder, and his mind conjures unbidden a perfect image of the curve of Viggo's neck, the tendon in relief when _he_ looked over his shoulder at breakfast. He has taken the step down from his little closet of a hotel bathroom, putting his feet in the awkward white vinyl shoes, and wondered about how often Viggo jerks off, how he does it, can I watch? He sits next to Viggo in a taxi, and he can smell him over the bland white-gloves-and-doilies air-freshener smell of the upholstery.

Sometimes Karl thinks about specific parts of Viggo he'd very much like to lick, under the theory that thinking about licking, when you can't lick, is the next best thing: the hollow of his throat and his wrist, no, make that every pulse point; the tip of his ear, and behind it, and the nape of his neck.

He got a good enough look at Viggo in the bathing rooms, because Viggo's not shy, and he isn't either. He thinks there is little enough point with Viggo, who can't care and would be offended by the suggestion that he discriminates sexually on the basis of baby-faces, suggestions of paunch, or weak chins. He thinks about walking up behind Viggo in the bath (they have another week in Japan, don't they?) and drinking the water as it runs over his neck and his shoulders. He thinks about bracing his hands on Viggo's hips and sliding into Viggo with one long thrust, no jabbing, no mistakes, no hesitation. He imagines it smooth and sweet, both of them sheened with soap, which should be slippery enough.

A first kiss would be too painful to think about, perhaps; Karl doesn't know why, exactly, but he's never thought about it. He likes to think about finding Viggo's mouth unerringly in the dark, when he's woken up from a dream, in the thirty seconds before he turns over and goes back to sleep. He likes to think about leaning over the breakfast table and capturing his lips in a little green-tea kiss, and Viggo's eyes lighting up and Viggo saying "Mm," with a little smile just for him.

They're in a Buddhist temple, looking at an eighty percent life size sculpture covered in flaking gold paint. There are people praying in the next room. When they walk out into the sunlight they're on a balcony overlooking a little piece of mountainside that seems to have come out of nowhere, because as far as Karl was aware they were in the middle of a city, and he can't see any city anywhere around. Viggo leans on the railing, pursing his lips, shading his eyes, and Karl thinks about taking him back here in twenty years for another sunset and saying "Do you remember that time?"

"Oh, this is beautiful." Viggo is taking more pictures than he'll have time to develop. He says to Karl, softly, "Can you see if there's any black and white film in the camera bag? It would be the inside pocket." The bag hangs around his neck and he's leaning over to look through the viewfinder at chest-height, framing a shot by the eaves of the temple and the simple lines of the railing.

Karl smiles, not without trepidation, and moves close to him. He has to bend over Viggo's arm, but it's not close enough, so then he's ducked under; there was no way to take the bag off with both Viggo's hands occupied, and Viggo is holding perfectly still. His right arm almost rests on Karl's back. His shirt is open in a V at the collar. Karl breathes deeply. If he leant over, five, seven centimeters, his mouth would be on Viggo's chest. He wonders if he could pass it off as an accident. He wants to not have to worry about it--doesn't want to want and want and want. Karl wants to _take_. The camera bag is partly unzipped, but the shadow of Viggo's body is dark, and Karl has to slide his hand into the slick nylon pocket in search of the little rolls of film.

He finds the black and white too quickly for his taste. When he's standing up, the film between thumb and forefinger held out like some kind of offering and feeling suddenly exposed and ridiculous out of Viggo's shadow, then, only _then_ does Viggo snap the picture. "Don't use all the film before sunset," he says stupidly.

Viggo laughs and props his elbows on the railing. "Are you going to time me? One picture every three minutes?"

Karl looks at his bare wrist, then at the wide titanium band dangling a little loose around Viggo's. "Borrow your watch?"

Viggo's hand flops over, palm and watch fastening up, resting on the railing. Karl wraps his hand around it, clasping the forearm firmly, and turns it over. It's just about sunset, but the light hasn't changed colors; it's yellow-white and dim, undappled by leaves and shadows, and they seem to be perched on top of the world.

The watch face is a blank white circle of reflected light. He has to lean close to read it. "Seven thirteen," he says, "you have three minutes."

Viggo turns sideways to look at him, smiling slowly, with his chin propped on his fist propped on the railing. He looks like a goddamned photo out of a magazine. Karl wishes he could feel disgusted or annoyed, but mostly, he just wants to pick Viggo up by the lapels of his jacket and back him up against the railing and see how far down Viggo's throat his tongue can go in three minutes. "I can see you're going to be more trouble than I thought," says Viggo, and puts one hand on his hip apparently just to draw Karl's eyes. He knows intellectually that Viggo's body is not perfect, but for the moment he can't quite summon the wits to imagine how anyone might want to change him.

"Um," he says noncommittally, still looking.

*

In his dream it's either raining very hard, or snowing, and Karl-as-Viggo is trying to drive through it, but he can't see out the windows. Every flicker in the corner of his eye, every sound, makes him jump with nerves. He's listening to some very loud music that he doesn't like, but can't turn off. The car swerves left and right, and he never lets up his grip on the steering wheel, so he can't say for sure whether he's losing control of it or not. He thinks shapes are looming out of the blankness of the windows, but they don't and don't and don't and don't until he is pretty sure he must have been imagining them. The car is small and cold and too close around him. The music makes him grit his teeth.

He slams on the brakes and nothing happens. "Goddammit," he says clearly and with that out-of-place calm you often have in dreams. Karl-as-Viggo knows that the only thing to do is to climb out through the sunroof, so that is what he does.

Then he meets Karl-Karl, scruffy black hair and an attempt at a dashing beard Karl. "This," says Karl-Karl to Karl-as-Viggo, "is my son, Aaron." He pulls out a wallet stuffed with photos. "And this is me when I was seven; this is my first acting job; this is my first date. Here's Ashley." Karl-Karl glances up brightly at Karl-as-Viggo and says, "She can be really awful." And leans in to kiss Karl-as-Viggo. Karl-Karl kisses long and slow and wet and the kissing just kind of goes on and on, like listening to music with your eyes closed. "This is my mum and dad. This is my Aunt Evelyn. This is my dog, and this is Ashley's dog."

Karl-as-Viggo is walking towards a pair of plate glass doors. On the other side there's a patio graced with a deep swimming pool. He dabbles his feet and then his ankles and then up to the knees, and then he wades, and then he swims, even though the water is like ice. He knows it will warm up.

The water keeps getting deeper and deeper until he is walking under it, where everything is slow and blue, and not quite so chilly any more. It's getting warmer and warmer and he's following the sensation, walking or swimming, he's not quite sure which. Where the water is warmest, there is Karl-Karl again, sleeping under the water and floating with his hair sticking out like black seaweed around his head. Karl-as-Viggo is moved and astonished by something about this picture, swims closer in silence, twines his fingers in Karl-Karl's hair and sets his lips against Karl-Karl's neck. Karl-Karl folds up automatically, sort of like a shiver of motion traveling out through his stillness from the spot where Karl-as-Viggo is biting his neck. He sits up and bends over--or something. He wraps around Karl-as-Viggo like a lot of seaweed, or a creature with an obscene number of black legs. They're kissing in total blackness, and burning warmth, wrapped around each other and rubbing and thrusting rhythmically with each passing swell of wave.

Karl wakes up painfully hard.

*

Viggo wants to go to souvenir shops.

"What for?" Karl is not looking at Viggo, for once, because he is engaged in catching an elusive sushi roll between two chopsticks.

"I want something that says 'peace.' Or I guess I could write peace on something else. But I just want to get something Japanese to remember this by."

Viggo's looking at him when Karl looks up and he has to blink and mentally shake himself. No, no, no. Reading things into Viggo's looks is getting to be the least of his problems. He has more trouble with Viggo's eyelashes and his mouth and the curve of his back. His mind can't get out of the gutter where Viggo is concerned, and really, it doesn't help to have woken up just barely early with a raging hard-on to fix and touched himself gently, trying to drag it out, until the sheets were sticking to him with sweat. Karl closed his eyes to jerk off, slow and deliberately rough. He's therefore got a bit of a problem when he sees Viggo sipping tea with his eyes closed. It makes him choke.

He's still choking when he hears a phone ring elsewhere in the restaurant. A few tables away a Japanese girl dressed all in mismatched plaids turns her purse upside-down and starts pawing through the jumble. She pulls out what appears to be a slightly miniature sparkly blue credit card and presses it to her ear: "Moshi moshi? ?"

Viggo isn't having any trouble with _his_ chopsticks.

Karl's eyes widen. "Oh, shit."

Viggo looks up.

"Aaron's got a soccer game. I was supposed to call."

"And wish him luck?"

Karl snorts a little. "I can't tell you what Ashley was thinking. It could be that or it could be that she wants to bitch about the coach always asking her to bring Kool-aid and brownies. But I'm still in trouble if I don't find a phone." And finally he's captured a shrimp roll. He eats it all in one bite to make sure none of it will get away. Of course, this has the unhappy result of filling his cheeks with vinegar and rice and fish until he feels like a greedy chipmunk, and he can't open his mouth to answer when Viggo says,

"I saw a payphone outside." He looks at Karl, smiling slightly, and says "you could finish your lunch."

Ashley sounds anything but relieved or happy to hear from him. "What?" She says. "Oh, it's you."

Karl tries not to laugh. "Is everything all right?"

"Sure, it's fine if you like to spend the morning getting your sandals soaking wet and listening to--Aaron! Aaron! Put him down. _In_ the cage--Arthur Greyhouse's theories about why it's so nice for women to take a little interest in their sons' early leanings towards sports."

Karl, who had the misfortune of meeting the extremely elderly Mr. Greyhouse only twice, says brightly, "At least this way, even if you do get bored or offended, you can have perfect faith that Aaron will grow up to be a real man, eh?"

"Right, because he wouldn't do that without brownies. I'm rolling my eyes at you, Urban." This is not a surprise. It's one of Ashley's favorite activities.

"So did I call just so you could yell at me?"

"I thought Aaron might want to talk to you, but he'll never be ready to leave on time as it is. You don't mind being yelled at."

"Just doing my duty," Karl agrees. "Have you thought about bringing a book?"

"Only in idle fantasy," she says wryly. "So where's the dishy Dane?"

Karl comes close to spitting out a drink even though he's not drinking anything: "Ashley, _what_ have you been reading, _Seventeen_?"

She sounds serene. There's the sound of a kitchen timer and a little clang. "Maybe. A-ha, perfect every time! Duncan Hines, how I love thee. Speaking of 'love,' where--"

"Here," says Karl, laughing.

"A-haaa, and where is here?"

"Souvenir shopping, actually. We're saving the temples for a bit later in the day."

Ashley is humming under her breath, but she stops at that and makes a little sound of annoyance. "How romantic is souvenir shopping?"

Karl glances at Viggo's profile. Viggo apparently thinks it's not polite to stare at him or appear to be listening, so for once, he can check out the Viggo-ass. "It's all in the company," he says. "Souvenir shopping with you, now?"

"Fuck you very much too," comes the cheerful reply. "I don't take my dates souvenir shopping!"

"I'm hardly your _date_."

"Point."

"Where are you taking him, this date of which you speak?"

"_Her_ place," Ashley corrects him. "I'm going to get some for the second time this month? oh. Sorry."

He rolls his eyes. "Well, that's romantic."

She crows, "You're _green_ with envy. Speaking of which, I got white grape juice instead of Kool-aid for once. I'm an independent woman, baby! Can't nobody bring me down. ?Listen, thanks for calling and all, but Aaron's still not back so I've got to go make sure he's really getting dressed. I'll talk to you later, mkay?"

He turns around to see Viggo looking at him quizzically. "That was your fiancee?"

Karl has taken three steps towards one of those shops that overflow with dolls, fans, paper umbrellas, key chains, coin purses, and handkerchiefs, and is forced to stop in his tracks. He almost stumbles. "I'm sorry, _what_?"

Viggo quirks one eyebrow. "You were talking to your fiancee."

Karl blinks. As far as he's aware, he has called Ashley his fiancee exactly twice, once as a joke to her, and once to a magazine reporter who was getting irritatingly nosy. He lets Viggo precede him into the shop. "No, no. We're not engaged." Pause. Does it sound stupid and pathetic to tell Viggo that he's totally unattached and, in point of fact, bisexual and lonely? How about, "_I'm_ not engaged. Where did you get that idea?"

Viggo is still studying him thoughtfully, hovering over a table covered in knick knacks. He quirks one eyebrow in that friendly Viggo fashion and shakes his hair back from his forehead. Something philosophical or poetic is going on behind his pale eyes in their new, improved super-intense settings. There are these little creases in the corners of them. "Sherry said something to me," says Viggo evasively.

"Sherry?" A key grip with the heart of a frustrated interior designer. "I never spoke to her about it. Maybe she read it in a magazine," Karl says, feeling far beyond weird. He turns half away but not quite, and picks up a bandanna in plastic packet.

Viggo says, "If you don't mind my asking, you've got me curious now." Karl has reason to be grateful his skin won't show a blush. He's so delighted he can't think of anything (well, maybe a few things) he'd rather Viggo had said.

And it's just like the dream, pulling out a little imaginary photo-album and blowing dust off the cover, _This is the day Ashley pushed Karl out of a tree into the lake, this is Ashley's senior prom and this is the shaving cream Karl put in her hair, this is Ashley's phobia of being a normal member of society, this is Karl's soft spot for children, animals, miniature things, and anything Ashley really wants him to do. This is all the alcohol Karl and Ashley drank before they fucked. This is Aaron. _

But he can't help feeling, a little confusedly, that talking about your best friend is one thing, but talking about the fact that you're really unequivocally single, while stealing surreptitious glances at Viggo's crotch, is a little lame. What he says is, "We've always been best friends--that's all. We're close. She wanted a baby."

Viggo purses his lips and raises his eyebrows, and turns around easily as if a string holding his gaze to Karl has been cut. "Fair enough." He fiddles with a ceramic bell shaped like a turtle. Karl sticks his hands in his pockets and floats around the shop, brooding, without looking at anything.

It takes Viggo three tries to get his attention. "What do you think of this?"

It's a green brocade change purse. "Well," says Karl. "It's pretty. Kind of small."

Viggo laughs, "Go on. You hate it. Isn't that what you're trying to say?"

"Well?"

"You hate it, and you hate my taste, and in fact, if I gave this to you, you would try to return it to the store. Even if the store was in another country."

Karl laughs, successfully jolted out of his reverie. Viggo winks. It's nice--sweet--it feels astonishingly good to be bantering with Viggo. Flirting. But he can't help thinking Viggo was a little hurt or crushed by his short answer about Ashley.

"I bet you don't like my idea for a peace shirt either," Viggo teases.

But _that_ can't pass unchallenged. "No," Karl protests, "it's a great idea."

Viggo's got a Puckish mischievous look. "You're only saying that. Are you going to buy anything?"

"Really!" Karl puts the bandanna on the counter. It only comes out to a few hundred yen. "I wish I'd thought of it. Look, I'll wear one, to prove it to you. I'll help you make one if you can't find one."

Viggo's forcibly holding his mouth still, it looks like, to keep from laughing, looking at Karl from the corner of his eye. "Deal. What's that?" The bell jangles as they push open the door and step back out onto the street. Karl's already ripped off the plastic packaging and put it in the trash bin outside the shop.

He doesn't answer that, occupied with peeling a little sticker off the corner and breaking the little stitches of white thread holding it stretched over a piece of cardboard. "Viggo, about Ashley," he says.

Viggo is clearly surprised he's brought it up. He turns and stares at Karl, who's gotten rid of the white thread. There's no trash can in sight, so he sticks it in his pocket, and reaches up to tie the bandanna around Viggo's head with the brush-painted character centered in his forehead. This is probably even more surprising for Viggo, but he doesn't say anything, just stands still to let Karl reach around his head and finish the knot, smiling faintly. It holds the hair out of his eyes in a very dashing, pirate-like way.

"Anything you want to know about her?" Karl says finally, tightening the knot carefully so it won't slip. "I wouldn't really know where to start. You know?"

Viggo's face is unreadable, not really a smile or a frown or anything else. He says, "I know."

*

The wind blows over the hills, carrying a fine curtain of sand on its edge like a knife, and when you walk it gusts sharply against your skin, abrasive. When Karl-as-Viggo turns his head the wrong way, it tries to dash up into his eyes. The landscape is barren and sere as far as the eye can see, gray and almost flat, but not quite, and the houses crouch surrounded by scraggly trees on the bumpy carpet of hills, perversely close together. The road is deserted. He doesn't look up at the sky, because it's empty gray with no sign of sun.

He's sitting on the ground, looking at his toes. The sand wavers; a gristly gray-green weed clutches for purchase and loses it. He's lost in thought, and the sand and the weed blur like water in front of his eyes. He clenches his fists.

Over the edge of the cliff is the real water, spraying when each wave spends itself against the beach, making white fans of droplets against rocks that jut from the shoreline like teeth. There's a faint gold halo on aquamarine where the sun touches the sea not too far from shore, but the beach itself is so far away from him that when he shouts, the people below can't hear.

The dark man is there. He stops what he's doing and smiles up at Karl-as-Viggo. "Karl!" But he turns around again anyway, and presents the black blur of the back of his hair and the golden expanse of his back. "Karl?" Nothing.

Karl-as-Viggo is getting aroused. He draws his knees up to sit more comfortably and cups his hand around his swelling cock. The contact pushes taut denim against the sensitive skin and it chafes. Karl-as-Viggo bites his lip, feeling the little pulses of pleasure from the pressure trailing little sweeps of pain as though he rubbed himself with a handful of wet sand. He looks down over the edge of the cliff, or really, stares. It's hard to see anything from such a distance, but he stares anyway. And wants. And wishes, really hard. He wishes it were Karl-Karl's hand fumbling with his zipper and pushing inside it. He wishes Karl were gasping and staring. He wishes he could kiss Karl, too. He wants to be pinned to the ground. He wishes he could go down there and chase Karl down the beach and not catch him until they're both soaking wet and laughing until they cry. He wants them to shower together.

He rolls over and lies face down in the sand. It seems to get hotter and hotter and hotter, and every breath he takes makes his throat and his stomach burn until he thinks he's smothering--

\--and wakes up in a panic, gasping and staring at the ceiling.

*

The day they both flew here he dreamed about Viggo on an airplane. Certainly Viggo was on an airplane. He knew that.

The next day he dreamed about Viggo meeting him, and Viggo jerking off. He had no way to know that in advance. Or now. Or at all. He can't really ask Viggo. It could have happened. Viggo had already met him, though, and if you're talking about specific times they walk up to one another and say "hi" because they're in the same room, there was really no doubt it would happen.

Next he dreamed about Viggo having trouble driving, Viggo being lost, about himself giving Viggo his life history, about Viggo kissing him and Viggo swimming and then kissing him some more. And rubbing against him like a horny teenager. As for the driving and the swimming and the kissing and making out, no. He can't say Viggo wasn't lost in some metaphorical sense, but he wasn't lost in reality unless he got momentarily lost on the way back from the bathroom or something. Really the life-history thing was the only thing, and that had really happened more because of the dream than the other way around.

But it's a useful parallel anyway, if he oversimplifies and sands the edges a little and sort of jams the pieces together, the way you do with an origami bird when you realize you've made a fold a millimeter wrong somewhere and you can't go back and fix it. In the end, the bird and the theory are both functional, only a little awkward if you look closely.

So say he's laid a little path of stepping stones over the past few days, and some of them are situated pretty firmly in reality--the airplane, for instance--and some of them are a little wobbly, like the jerking-off one. (Viggo's a guy, right? He has to jerk off at least every _couple_ of days unless he's a lot older than he looks. The odds are pretty good.)

It makes the last few days make more sense in a funny kind of way. He finds it comforting, even if none of the dreams have been all that comforting on their own.

"Let's make T-shirts," says Viggo, at the empty breakfast table. He's sitting there with the bandanna Karl put on him yesterday tied around his head, dressed in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and some linen pants that are very nicely drapey.

Karl leans back in the chair and takes a sip of tea carefully. He probably ought to just give up and give in to burning his tongue every day if he has to have coffee or tea, hot, before every breakfast and after every dinner, but he's never resigned himself to it in more than thirty years. "Okay," he says.

"Great," says Viggo, and stands up, even though Karl hasn't had any breakfast. Karl raises his eyebrows at Viggo. He's in the middle of taking a drink of tea, so he can't say anything. Viggo stands there for a moment, and then his gaze focuses on Karl and he smiles sheepishly and says "Oh." He sits down again and spreads his napkin in his lap just as a waitress walks by curiously to see if he's spilled hot coffee on his crotch, or wants the check or something.

"May I help you?"

"Yes, thank you," says Viggo, and then pauses, looking stricken. "I didn't make up my mind."

"Should I come back?" she says patiently, a little ponytail bobbing at the back of her head like an anime character's when she dips her chin earnestly.

"Iie," says Karl, an impressive one word of Japanese. "Hotcakes for both of us, please." He steals a glance at Viggo's face instead of his crotch for once when the waitress leaves. He's relieved to see that Viggo looks not the slightest bit miffed, only a little bemused, maybe.

"Thanks." He takes another long swallow of green tea. It would've drained the cup even if he hadn't drunk any before. Karl picks up the pot and fills the cup again when Viggo sets it down on the table. Viggo makes no remark, but it strikes him suddenly as a ridiculously domestic thing to do.

Over hotcakes, they discuss how to make the shirts. Viggo says there's another little shop called Suntory a few blocks away, and it's like a drug store. He wants to get white shirts and magic markers. "I have a white shirt," says Karl, but Viggo waves this away.

"We want to make more than one." Oh. "Do you know how to write 'peace' in Japanese?"

Karl pauses and licks some syrup off his finger. "I used to," he says hopefully. Then he remembers Ashley saying "God knows it's been at my house for long enough" and shoving a battered paperback in his knapsack. "But," he adds, "I think I might have a dictionary."

"Ooh, good." Viggo's eyes light up.

They walk down the miniature Japanese sidewalks and cross a few little side-streets on the way to Suntory, which is actually smaller than the average gas station, but does indeed carry not just white T-shirts but boxers, briefs, socks, ties, razors and cologne all crowded together on a narrow shelf. They find black and red and green magic markers further down the row, along with pink Hello Kitty spiral notebooks, Milky and sparkly gel pens, mechanical pencils, frog-shaped erasers, and packets of lined paper.

"Hey, Viggo." At the end of the aisle is apparently a summer display, with black and navy blue plastic thong sandals, plastic-ribbed paper fans printed with Hello Kitty, cartoon panda bears, some kind of scantily-clad anime girls, and an American basketball player in a goofy pose. The crowning glory, plastic-edged straw cowboy hats, appropriately occupy the top shelf.

Viggo is studying the Japanese letters on a furry pink "Memory Book." "Hm?" When he looks up, Karl crams a hat onto his head over the bandanna. He looks startled and rakishly scruffy, with little wisps of hair crushed down by the hat band on his forehead.

"Surprise."

Viggo walks the five steps it takes to bring him up to the glass-fronted freezer cases lining the little store and studies his reflection. He takes the hat and the bandanna off, then smoothes his hair back and replaces the hat. He solemnly hands the bandanna to Karl, and then turns to the mirror to tweak the hat until it's slightly tilted down over his left eye. He walks as dignifiedly as possible to the register with the packets of T-shirts and the magic markers.

"Wait," says Karl, "you're not _buying_ it?"

"My friend, we old men want to take every precaution against sun cancer," Viggo grins.

"You're not old," says Karl indignantly. And he only cares a little that it sounds stupid.

But Viggo buys the hat anyway. Outside Suntory he crosses his arms, holding the paper bag of T-shirt supplies under his arm, and lounges back against a pillar supporting their awning. "So?" He says. "Aren't you going to put the bandanna back?" An attempt to jerk his chin at the hat doesn't really work, since the hat and the chin are both attached to his head, but Karl gets the message anyway.

He stands next to Viggo, whose personal space seems to encompass twice the radius it usually does because of the way he's lounging, and ducks a little to see what his fingers are doing as he ties the knot at the back. His mouth is very dry.

"Thanks," says Viggo brightly, and sets off jauntily for the hotel, swinging the paper bag at his side.

*

Meiji-ji is named for the Victorian-era Japanese Emperor whose reign saw the greatest and most significant influx of Westernization and modernization Japan has undergone before or since. The Japanese determination to meet the West on its own terms has never ceased to co-exist with a certain hidden traditionalism. There are ice cream stands and Coca-Cola ads in the shrine's grounds, but there are also prepubescent girls in white cotton kimonos with clean faces and simple hair in the tiny buildings where you can buy tokens for good luck in everything from health to exams to travel by car.

They're walking across a gravel lot-- "Foreshadowing for the rock gardens," says Viggo.

Karl giggles and wipes hands still damp from a the ritual cleansing inside the gates on his pants. Viggo's got his hands in his pockets again, and he seems to be making a business of posing artfully to get as much notice for his "NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL" shirt as he can. A group of American students in sunglasses and Walkmans poke and whisper at each other in their wake, and Viggo catches Karl's eye and winks.

There are pine and deciduous trees around everything like the velvet bed inside a jewel case, and the shrine itself is the jewel. The wooden steps are dark and shallow and run the length of the front. The roof is high, and the open wall is punctuated with pillar after pillar. The woodwork in the rafters inside alone is amazing. Karl can't get over the woodwork. Viggo is voluble about the atmosphere. "It's almost magical, isn't it? Don't you think?" He says, leaning close to Karl's ear. Karl is watching a school boy in uniform flip coins, silver and brass spinning arcs in the air, into hip-deep dark wood cases with black openings on top.

"They're for donations," he says, fishing out his wallet. He took out all his own money in the airport and put in an interior pocket of his luggage, so all that's left are the yen. A one yen, ten, ten, fifty, and two hundred yen coins. He looks at Viggo.

Viggo is staring past the donation boxes at the roped-off courtyard, where the exquisite, immaculate square of silver gravel is like a doormat in front of the high peaked roof of the shrine proper. Gongs and low-burning lights flank a steep flight of stairs wreathed in smoke and shadow, vanishing up, up, one or two stories, he can't tell how high--the top is invisible, cloaked in mysticism. It looks like the cover of a science fiction novel. None of the pictures he's seen really compare to this.

Viggo is unnaturally quiet. A brochure dangles from lax fingers. "That's where the spirit lives." Karl can imagine that the dark flight of stairs ends some black infinity higher than the rafters at the foot of a throne where emperor Mutsuhito broods over the silent priests, the sale of little health and travel charms, the sweet water, the feral cats and the tame pigeons.

He finds himself walking unwillingly closer, Viggo pacing him every step of the way, until they're a scant foot from the rope. He can't help squinting. The sky is white or blue, depending on your point of view, but the trees are like a screen for light and heat and sound and they make everything in the shrine cooler, more serene--older.

Says Viggo breathlessly, "It's beautiful."

Karl stares at it with the strangest feeling of emptiness, unable to look away from the spirit's dwelling, while his train of thought leapfrogs from the threat of war to the endless depressingly real filming of Helm's Deep to the introduction of steam to Japan. Looking at a symbol as powerful as this has rocked him back on his heels while his mind struggles to put together the threads of all the ideas it has given rise to. Modern Japan, turn of the century Japan, World War II Japan, Imperialist America, religious fundamentalism, East and West, simplicity and peace, the self, society.

Something of the kind is surely running through Viggo's mind, but it's as far away from Karl as if Viggo were in America and Karl were still alone here, opening and closing his empty hands. This kind of sobering majesty is the kind of thing you want to look at with someone to hold your hand. He has to resist the idea that Viggo is right there.

Walking out of the shrine is not like walking into it. The building is smaller when there is a parking lot, and not a physical manifestation of the hereafter, at the other side of it. The gravel lot isn't just a path to the door; there are cultivated trees, growing twisted like ink paintings, only infinitely greener. Folded strips of white paper, each representative of the visit of a pilgrim, are folded and strung on thread dangle like Christmas garlands and blow in the breeze.

There is another of those kiosks which looks rather like a dollhouse- or garden shed-sized version of the shrine. A priest is selling painted wooden plaques shaped like open envelopes. The back is blank for a letter to the spirit of Mutsuhito; the fronts of all are identical, prancing white horses with their muscles delineated in curling black outlines. Each Shinto shrine has its own design. Presumably Mutsuhito would not deign to read a plaque painted with the standard of another deity. Nearby, under a tree, a tall wooden rack of pegs overhangs a short bench. Sharpies are lying in plain sight for common use. No one would do that in a European cathedral; they'd all be gone in a day.

Viggo wants to know what they are for. "They're wishes," Karl explains. "The spirit of the shrine reads them all and decides which ones to answer." He has one at home from Ashley's trip to Japan, blank. "Lots of tourists just keep them as souvenirs."

The line to purchase the wooden plaques for five hundred yen is only a few people long. Karl stands under the tree and thinks about whether he should put his hands in his pockets. He feels his stomach pulling tight like the top of a drum. By the time Viggo has moved to the front of the line and bought two of the plaques, he still hasn't made up his mind. Viggo gives him one, and he jumps nervously even though he knew that Viggo was going to.

Deciding what you are going to do is one thing, as anyone who has ever wanted to become an actor can tell you, and doing it is a totally different one. The difference between knowing what he is obviously supposed to do--the wooden rack under the tree _heavy_ with wishes, the brooding silence of the shrine behind, and all the things Karl wants--and writing it on the plaque is greater than the difference between Mutsuhito's shapeless throne and the very real wood and stone at the bottom of the flight of steps.

Also, there's the matter of what to write. He doesn't know where to start saying what he wants.

"Now what?" Viggo is looking expectantly at him and smiling.

Karl points to the low wooden bench. It's so close to the ground you've got to kneel to use it for a writing surface-- "You write a wish on the plaque and leave it on this rack." Every breeze makes the wooden plaques, like so many chimes on their red nylon cords, clink together. The rack is a grid of little wood shapes, half showing the white horse and half little or big rows of Japanese characters. He can read a few, the ones with fairly decent handwriting, at a glance, and they're everything from a little brother to a new library to a better job to one more year for grandma. Karl knows if you only looked through the plaques "world peace" is in their somewhere. When he and Viggo are done it will be there twice.

He's opened a Sharpie and its slightly poisonous smell has just reached his nose. He holds it poised above the plaque--motionless. Counting to five doesn't decide for him and neither does counting to ten. Viggo's back is to him, displaying the Japanese characters Karl put there with the aid of his dictionary. Either Viggo is still writing, or he hasn't started yet.

Karl stifles the urge to lick the Sharpie and the concurrent urge to turn and lick Viggo. He almost writes "peace" himself, only he can't feel quite right about what would feel almost like a joke after all the thought he's given it, and since he doesn't believe what he writes can have any bearing on peace, whatever he might wish.

He could leave the plaque there blank, but that seems almost as bad, so he takes a deep breath and writes "you" after all, which is really what he meant all along. Right now, this wish is the most powerful thing in his mind and heart.

Glancing down at Viggo's head when he hangs the little plaque, Karl is surprised to see that Viggo is still looking at his, but has set the Sharpie aside and put the lid back on it. As if he senses Karl's regard, he looks up, his eyebrows raised and his face totally unguarded. A smile is a moment late and spreads over his features like a shadow slipping into place when a cloud passes in front of the sun.

"Sorry," says Viggo. Karl notices that he stands up easily, like a snake uncoiling, but he doesn?t stop to dust off his knees. He seems to choose a peg at random and hangs the plaque horse-side out, just as Karl has naturally done.

There is a lull of silence between them. Karl doesn't realize he is looking at Viggo until after he realizes that Viggo is looking at him--he has given Viggo the same unfocused regard as the shrine, with the minor difference that he is thinking about Viggo and looking at him at the same time. Behind Viggo's shoulder, some school children have spread a line of purchased bird seeds on the ground and the tame pigeons are dropping in from the roofs of every building in sight.

Viggo tilts his head to one side before Karl has existed on pins and needles for too long. "What did you wish for?"

It's perversely a tremendous relief to gesture at the plaque, slip his hands in his pockets and watch helplessly while Viggo takes it in his hands and turns it over with the care he would give a still-damp watercolor painting.

Viggo stands in profile to Karl, and even though he's reading just one word, three letters, he purses his lips and stares at it a long while, until the boy and girl lose patience and run through the line of pigeons. They scatter in every direction and leap into flight from the ground, spreading quickly in a wide radius like a cross between the ripples following a stone into a pond and a whirlwind of gray feathers. Soon enough there's nothing on the ground but the seed and a few of those feathers. The children lose interest and wander away.

A cloud passes over the sun. Viggo looks up and smiles at him.

Karl opens his mouth to reply to whatever Viggo might say, but Viggo doesn't say anything. He starts three times to say something anyway. Viggo's smile has darkened a little on the edges, but Karl can't read whether it's sad or angry or amused or predatory. Before there's time, Viggo has turned and walked away and left Karl looking at his back.

The children are gone, into the shrine, and when Viggo walks between the wooden pillars at the far end of the gravel yard, Karl and the priest are the only people left there. He's sort of afraid his mouth is still open.

A photo of the shrine's roof taken now from very far away might seem to show gingerbread, because the spine is positively covered with a serene crenellation of pigeons. Karl watches one of them regain his courage and take flight, bank over the priest's little dollhouse and dip to the ground to peck at the rest of the birdseed alone. The pigeon hops fastidiously over the ground with the priest watching, picking and choosing his meal, and Karl picks up the plaque Viggo has just left on the rack.

When a shout frightens the pigeon and he vanishes in a snap of wings, he leaves the priest alone in the gravel yard.

Viggo is waiting for Karl under the great gate, leaning on a pillar that was part of what would have been one of the biggest trees Karl has ever seen, with a smile lurking under the straw hat that Karl can't call dark so much as smug.

Viggo's plaque says: _It seems frivolous, but not when I look at you. I want the world to be beautiful again.  
And I want you._

End


End file.
